“This is because five of the six main numbers drawn were multiples of seven - 07, 14, 21, 35 and 42 - and clearly this is a hugely popular set of numbers.

“To put it into context, the four Lotto draws before this one had 55, 36, 61 and 38 Match 5 winners - so over 4,000 Match 5 winners is extraordinarily high.

“It is a lottery at the end of the day, and the prizes people win are down to the balls drawn and the number of people who match with those numbers. As a result, we do sometimes see extremely rare situations like this.”